"A campaign to add 10 billion oysters to the bay by 2025 — naturally purifying the water — is on pace even as Virginia and Maryland contend with agricultural runoff and other pollutants."

"California’s contentious and long-debated plan to replumb the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and pump more water south finally has a price tag: about $20 billion."

"Ocean temperatures that have gone “crazy haywire” hot, especially in the Atlantic, are close to making the current global coral bleaching event the worst in history. It’s so bad that scientists are hoping for a few hurricanes to cool things off."

"The El Nino weather pattern should fade out by June but could be replaced by the La Nina phenomenon by the second half of the year, a U.S. government forecaster said on Thursday."

"Scores of emaciated brown pelicans, too weak to fly, have been found on Southern California beaches in the last month and taken to an Orange County rescue center, according to its director."

"A recent investigation has revealed evidence that China's distant-water fishing fleet, the world's biggest in scale, commits environmental and labor abuses in the southwest Indian Ocean off the coast of East Africa."

"For several years now, one question has held the key to understanding just how much we should worry about the hundreds of tons of DDT that had been dumped off the coast of Los Angeles." "Now, in a highly anticipated study, researchers have identified tiny zooplankton and mid-to-deep-water fish as potential links between the contaminated sediment and the greater ecosystem."

"As scientists rush to save ailing corals elsewhere, in Venezuela locals are trying to kill off this stinky variety."

"More than 1,000 sea lions have gathered at San Francisco’s Pier 39 this spring, the largest herd in at least 15 years. Mounds of floppy, delightfully ungraceful marine mammals have plopped themselves on to rafts along the city’s pier, displaying themselves to the thousands of tourists who pass by the area each day."

"Giant pumps hum inside a warehouse-like building, pushing water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta into the California Aqueduct, where it travels more than 400 miles south to the taps of over half the state’s population."